Shares in the Vehicles have not been recommended by any U.S. federal or state or non-U.S. securities commission or regulatory authority, including the SEC. Furthermore, the foregoing authorities have not confirmed the accuracy or determined the adequacy of any information on this website or in the Offering Documents. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.

Ripple – Ripple was launched by OpenCoin, a company founded by technology entrepreneur Chris Larsen in 2012. Like Bitcoin, Ripple is both a currency and a payment system. The currency component is XRP, which has a mathematical foundation like Bitcoin. The payment mechanism enables the transfer of funds in any currency to another user on the Ripple network within seconds, in contrast to Bitcoin transactions, which can take as long as 10 minutes to confirm.
With things like brain wallets possible, this means that even in the worst case scenario, you can literally store your bitcoins in your brain and nowhere else, and thereby easily prevent their confiscation. Just yet another fundamental innovation in the evolution of currency that bitcoin has made possible — its fully intangible nature is actually an asset.
Similarly, if you were able to bet at 1:2 odds (meaning if you bet $100 and win, you get $200) that a coin would yield heads, this would also be very +EV (positive expected value). The coin would still yield heads half the time, but that half of the time, you would earn $200, and the other half of the time, you would only lose $100. Hence, repeating this bet an infinite number of times would allow you to dramatically earn more money than you lost yet again.
Currently, when sending cross border fiat transactions money goes through multiple intermediaries. This can take weeks to complete. The process is not only limited to those banks ‘in the loop’ but is also riskier because when unaffiliated banks are working with each other, they have to issue IOU’s, which means a sending bank has less security should a receiving bank suddenly collapse.
One further benefit to bitcoin is that it is truly yours to own, and you can keep it yourself, without the need for a bank or any other intermediary, and use it just as easily as you might a credit card. This ensures that you won’t fall victim to a banking system collapse brought on by fractional reserve banking or irresponsible government and financial institution fiscal policies in general. It also ensures, however, that no one can take your money from you even on an individual basis, global financial apocalypse aside.
The digital assets market will either be 0 or a multi-trillion dollar space. We obviously believe the latter. Highly disruptive technologies have always experienced tremendous challenges early on. Most people are unaware that even technologies such as the automobile and the lightbulb were initially met with massive resistance. Initially, technological breakthroughs do not have the right infrastructure in place to showcase their true potential. This will take time, but if it’s truly transformative the infrastructure will eventually develop, and the new technology will be accepted. We think the truly extraordinary returns will come earlier in the cycle from investors willing to take the extra risk. In my opinion we’ll look back on this day like it was mid-1990’s internet, we had the vision, but the true winners had not distinguished themselves yet.
Pro Tip:If you want to invest, but aren’t keen on using your own funds, consider utilizing accrued interest on a savings account to invest. Compare savings accounts and their interest rates. If you put a lot of money into savings every year, you could fund a sizable investment with just the money the bank pays you in interest. It eliminates your personal risk and maximizes your chances of a return.

One other important mistake that beginner crypto investors make is greed, which can be boiled down to a lack of diversification of investment streams and an assumption that the market will behave in a predictable way. Many well-known investors and entrepreneurs strongly vocalize their opinion that diversifying investments leads to less impressive returns. While this is true in traditional investment channels, which is what these specific opinions are referring to, it is not true in the cryptocurrency market.

NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (the "Trust") (OTCQX:GBTC), announced that a fork in the Bitcoin blockchain occurred yesterday, August 1, 2017. The Sponsor is monitoring events relating to the fork and the Bitcoin Cash resulting from the fork. A record date has not been established for the purposes of any distribution that may be made in connection with Bitcoin Cash. The Sponsor will announce a record date, if any, once established.
Of course, last year's cryptocurrency craze ran circles around traditional equities, including stocks. After beginning the year with a combined market cap of just $17.7 billion, the aggregate market cap of all virtual currencies by year's end had surged to $613 billion, equaling a climb of more than 3,300%. There may not be another year like this for any asset class for as long as we live.
Anonymous / private Bitcoin. Now, you may think, “What are you talking about? The BTC is anonymous already.” This is a very unfortunate albeit popular misconception. All BTC transactions can be seen by the public, and by giving out your wallet address to someone, the person is able to see all the payments you’ve sent and received. The black market (weapon manufacturers and drug dealers) created a solution for this. They basically created software that mixes your coins with other coins. Nevertheless, the software needs to be trusted and may not work correctly, which is pretty bad when your freedom depends on it. Monero has the mixing system built-in. This makes it perfect for any kind of black market. A popular darknet market adopted Monero, and this is how the currency got its first big growth boost.
Dan Caplinger has been a contract writer for the Motley Fool since 2006. As the Fool's Director of Investment Planning, Dan oversees much of the personal-finance and investment-planning content published daily on Fool.com. With a background as an estate-planning attorney and independent financial consultant, Dan's articles are based on more than 20 years of experience from all angles of the financial world. Follow @DanCaplinger
A long-term investment is one where you expect a cryptocurrency to perform better over a longer period of time. Simple! Normally, the minimum time for long-term investment is 6 months to 1 year. Although, some people plan to hold onto their investments for 5-10+ years. It’s up to you how you choose to invest; you can either make your full investment in one go, or you can invest at different times.

Oh boy.... Let me channel Mr. Miyagi: "walk on right side of road, fine. Walk on left side of road, fine. Walk in middle of road, splat!" This interview was middle of road, with nothing we haven't heard a dozen times already, offering frankly very little for crypto 'newbies' or crypto 'veterans', or even those who think crypto is crap. Just a big tub of vanilla ice cream, with no actionable questions or information in any of those directions. This could have been on the 'Today' show.

A contract written with and enforced by code, however, removes the need to trust a third party arbitrator (such as a court system), in much the same way that transactions enforced by bitcoin’s code remove the need to trust a third party financial institution. The code is written in such a way that clearly specifies the conditions of the contract, and will automatically enforce these conditions.
I think that this is a great strategy, and personally practice it with a few modifications. While I’ll never sell at any price essentially (unlike other investments, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are unique in that they arecurrencies, and consequently if they succeed, you won’t have to sell them to gain value from them. You can just use them directly, just as you might US dollars or any other form of currency. In the manner that I use the word sell here however, I mean that I likely won’t sell at any price under $100,000, as that’s where I personally see the moonshot value of bitcoin going towards, in the slight chance that it does succeed), no matter how high the price rises in the short term, if and when the price becomes particularly low as a result of a cratering market, I will look to buy more than I normally would, to double down on my investment here — all the while keeping in mind never to invest more than I’m perfectly willing to lose entirely.
The intangibility of bitcoin, however, does seem to hang some people up. It’s sometimes difficult to immediately conceive of how bitcoins could possibly hold value, as these people contend, they are intrinsically worthless. They are nothing but a concept, backed up by some computer code. Gold is a physical, tangible object that you can hold in your hand. It has real uses in industry and as jewelry that lend it value. Even paper money can be used for kindling or toilet paper if the need necessitates.

At the same time, it’s entirely unclear how governments will respond to bitcoin as it continues to grow, and if they’ll attempt to crack down in a very strong way and prohibit the use of bitcoin, or the creation of bitcoin related service companies, such as exchanges. If exchanges were banned from operating, for instance, it could very well make it very difficult for most people to transact between fiat currencies and bitcoin, and render the latter far less useful than it otherwise might be.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional (or even a veteran) trader. I am an intermediate trader with a passion for cryptocurrency. I am disclosing my own ventures in crypto because cryptocurrency trading does make up a chunk of my online income and I want to be 100% transparent with you when it comes to making money online. Investing in cryptocurrencies carries a risk – you may lose some or all of your investment. Always do your own research and draw your own conclusions. Again – this article is aimed purely at advising; draw your own conclusions on whether cryptocurrency trading is right for you.
The above summary is not a complete list of the risks and other important factors relevant to an investment in any Vehicle, and is subject to the more complete disclosures contained its private placement memorandum and other Offering Documents, copies of which may be obtained from Grayscale. For the Bitcoin Investment Trust, additional information is available in its annual and quarterly reports on the OTC Markets website, www.otcmarkets.com. Such reports are not prepared in accordance with SEC requirements and may not contain all information that is useful for an informed investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
All things mentioned above are the elements of my personal strategy that I’ve created over the past months. How you’re going to implement them is entirely up to you; these are simply guidelines for a strategy that has been helping me a lot. It might not necessarily suit your goals and vision. I’m investing for the very long term, and even my short-term trades are done with the goal of increasing the value of my portfolio for the long term.
But here, more than anywhere else, is where you need to proceed with caution. Bitcoin is already incredibly risky, imagine what risks smaller and lesser-known crypto brings. Rounding out a portfolio with other cryptocurrencies may be able to help you evaluate the state and perhaps the future of that market, but many of them can quickly prove to be a flash in the pan. The sudden rise of initial coin offerings -- a method of crowdfunding new cryptocurrencies in a way that avoids venture capital entirely -- has many people excited for the future, but also has many wondering if it's going to create an even more dangerous bitcoin bubble.
I’ve literally dipped my toe in the water this week, and it’s good to see that I’m headed the right direction in spreading the investment over various alts, as well as Daddy BTC. I’ve had an even split until now, using tips from online articles as to where to invest, so will head off to your how to research article and see what I can find for myself and come up with a nice balance for the portfolio.
I wrote about this on my blog. The market is only nine years old, and thus, the Crypto asset class is extremely new, and while these assets have been traded for a few years now, market conditions are continually changing. Unlike the stock market, we do not have decades of trading data to guide us. What worked a year ago might not work today, even things which worked three months ago might not work now. As new investors come into the market and liquidity improves, trading patterns are not always consistent. We must accept that nobody knows that the fuck will happen, and anyone who says so is purely speculating, and as such, it is essential that all ‘expert’ advice is taken with a pinch of salt.
When all is said and done, there will hence be 21 million bitcoins. Exactly that, no more, no less. Elegant, no? This eliminates yet another risk with extant currencies, gold included: there are absolutely no surprises when it comes to knowing the present and future supply of bitcoin. A million bitcoin will never be found randomly in California one day and incite a digital gold rush.
While it is enticing to attribute the underwhelming trading volumes to the decline in the underlying assets’ valuation, some observers point out that the two are actually tied in a kind of an egg-and-chicken cycle, mutually influencing each other. As early as in January, when a multitude of versions explaining the crash of Bitcoin price began to emerge in media space, one of the less-visible yet sound considerations was that futures trading had opened the crypto markets to bear investors.
At its simplest then, this strategy involves buying when the price is lower than the last high. At its most complex, it involves studying charts, paying attention to short term and long term moving averages on different time scales, identifying historical support levels, and laddering buys. Whatever your level of skill is however, the concept is generally the same.
Litecoin (10%) – Litecoin is often marketed as being the silver to Bitcoin’s gold status. Being a hard fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin shares many similarities to the original coin; Litecoin can also be used as a value exchange coin. However, Litecoin’s block generation time of 2.5 minutes, compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes, and different hashing algorithm (Scrypt), are features designed to produce a more innovative blockchain and cryptocurrency.
With things like brain wallets possible, this means that even in the worst case scenario, you can literally store your bitcoins in your brain and nowhere else, and thereby easily prevent their confiscation. Just yet another fundamental innovation in the evolution of currency that bitcoin has made possible — its fully intangible nature is actually an asset.

In the case of less risky users which prefer long-term investment, it is important to build a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio. Fiat investors usually use benchmark indices such as S&P500 and Nasdaq Composite as they allow the opportunity to trade whole sectors easily and manage complicated portfolios in a straightforward investment, thus reducing the risks and volatility of the portfolio.

The moment you look at the amount of support Tron has been receiving lately, you immediately realize it’s not just yet another blockchain-based platform. Tron’s technology aims to deploy world’s largest FREE content entertainment system. The platform allows anyone to store and own data, and to freely publish their content. Its app “Peiwo” already gathers 10 million enthusiasts and is on the road to become the world’s first TRON-compatible entertainment app. This technology revolves around the following ideology: All contributions on the network should be of equal quantitative value, the Internet should be decentralized, and data creators should have the absolute ownership of the data. It’s important to realise though that Tron has been pushed like hell by an ambitious marketing department… I have not yet decided if this is a cryptocurrency which will survive but, for a one year hold, it seems a safe bet.
This can all be a little confusing and James Altucher gives a great overview in his ebook Cryptocurrencies 101. The way I see it is that each cryptocurrency can be viewed as a public company. You would do your due diligence to figure out a companies potential for growth long term before investing in its stocks and James argues that the same diligence must be applied when investing in crypto. The main question to be asked here is:
In the simplest terms, a futures contract (or a future) is an agreement to buy or sell a certain product on a fixed date. Futures are used as both an instrument for mitigating risks associated with price volatility of vital commodities, and as a tradable derivative product. A comprehensive Cointelegraph primer timed to the launch of the first regulated BTC futures last December is still there for anyone in need to recapitulate the essentials.